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Tuesday, December 30, 2014

It's a bad time to query a literary agent by Brian Henry

Note: Don't ever miss a post on Quick Brown Fox. Fill in your email in the box to the right under my bio, and get each post delivered to your In Box. So it’s
Christmas break and you’ve had time to finish your novel, polish your query
letter, and with New Year’s upon us, you’re full of resolution to land
yourself an agent this year. Wonderful. But hold up. Right now is the worst
time of the year to query an agent.

You want to avoid
querying an agent when:

-She’s
not in the office

-She
is in the office but not working

-She’s
trying to get work out of the way before going on holiday

-She’s
crazy busy

So forget
sending queries from about mid-December to mid-January. Starting about two
weeks before Christmas, the publishing world begins shutting down. Yes, agents
are still in the office, but they’re trying to clear their desks before the
holidays start. The last thing they want is to look at queries.

As
Christmas gets closer, less and less work gets done, and agents are disinclined
to pitch your manuscript anyway, because they know that editors at publishing
houses are doing just as little work; they’re more likely to be sipping eggnog
than looking at new manuscripts.

Then from
Christmas to New Year’s, odds are no one’s even in the office, but come January
2 (or the first Monday after New Year’s), agents are back in the office
and discovering that the work hasn’t gone away. They have 567 emails cluttering
their In Boxes, a pile of manuscripts they should really have read a couple
weeks ago, and in general so much work that they (almost) regret taking time
off.

Do they
want to read queries now? Hardly. Give them a week or two to get things under
control again.

But this
is a great time of year to plan your campaign, to comb through the postings about agents on Quick Brown Fox (here), to make your lists of possible
agents and preferred agents, and to write targeted queries. Also, if you haven’t
done it yet, trash your generic query and make a New Year’s resolution to write
only personalized queries from now on. Because once the holidays are out of the
way, this is a pretty good time of year to query agents. Certainly better than
the fall, which tends to be crazy busy in the publishing world.

But what
if you already have sent out a flurry of queries this holiday season?

Well, Don’t worry, be happy,
as Saint Bob used to say. A few agents will have used the dead time in the publishing world to catch up on things – like reading queries. Some agents are extra dutiful and will get to your query eventually even if you sent it in December 22. As for the rest, give it a reasonable amount of time and re-query all
agents who haven’t sent you a reject. At least, that’s what I’d do. – Brian

Olga Filina

Note: I’ll
be leading a "How to Get Published" workshop in Niagara on the Lake on Saturday, March 7, with literary agent Olga Filina of
The Rights Factory (see here)
– and Olga is actively looking for new authors.

Also, I’ll
lead a“Writing
for Children & for Young Adults" workshop
with Anne Shone, Senior Editor at Scholastic Canada, on Saturday, May 2, in
Oakville (seehere).

Weekly
courses: Whether you're looking for an introduction to creative
writing or you're getting your manuscript ready to submit to an agent, your
best bet is a weekly course. Starting in the new year, I’ll be offering classes
for beginners through advanced writers. See details for all six courses here.

For
details of “Welcome to Creative Writing” on Tuesday afternoons
in Burlington see here,
for “Writing Your Life & Other Personal Stories” on
Tuesday mornings in Oakville see here,
for “The Next Step in Creative Writing” on
Wednesday evenings in Burlington see here,
on Thursday afternoons in Mississauga see here, and
on Thursday evenings in Georgetown see here, and
for “Intensive Creative Writing” on Wednesday
afternoons in Burlington here.

Brian Henry has been a book editor, writer, and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He teaches creative writing at Ryerson University. He also leads weekly creative writing courses in Burlington, Mississauga, Oakville and Georgetown and conducts Saturday workshops throughout Ontario. His proudest boast is that he has helped many of his students get published.